The Doha Round is the latest round of trade negotiations among the WTO membership. Its aim is to achieve major reform of the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules. The work programme covers about 20 areas of trade. The Round is also known semi-officially as the Doha Development Agenda as a fundamental objective is to improve the trading prospects of developing countries.
The Round was officially launched at the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The Doha Ministerial Declaration provided the mandate for the negotiations, including on agriculture, services and an intellectual property topic, which began earlier.
In Doha, ministers also approved a decision on how to address the problems developing countries face in implementing the current WTO agreements.
The Doha Round began with a ministerial-level meeting in Doha, Qatar in 2001. Subsequent ministerial meetings took place in Cancún, Mexico (2003), and Hong Kong (2005). Related negotiations took place in Paris, France (2005), Potsdam, Germany (2007), and Geneva, Switzerland (2004, 2006, 2008).
Progress in negotiations stalled after the breakdown of the July 2008 negotiations over disagreements concerning agriculture, industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers, services, and trade remedies. The most significant differences are between developed nations led by the European Union (EU), the United States (US), and Japan and the major developing countries led and represented mainly by India, Brazil, China, and South Africa. There is also considerable contention against and between the EU and the US over their maintenance of agricultural subsidies - seen to operate effectively as trade barriers.
Since the breakdown of negotiations in 2008, there have been repeated attempts to revive the talks, so far without success. Intense negotiations, mostly between the US, China, and India, were held at the end of 2008 seeking agreement on negotiation modalities, an impasse which was not resolved. In April 2011, then director-general Pascal Lamy "asked members to think hard about 'the consequences of throwing away ten years of solid multilateral work'.” A report to the WTO General Council by Lamy in May 2012 advocated "small steps, gradually moving forward the parts of the Doha Round which were mature, and re-thinking those where greater differences remained." Adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration on 7 December 2013 for the first time successfully addressed bureaucratic barriers to commerce - a small part of the Doha Round agenda. More recently, however, at the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Conference, WTO members agreed on a historic decision to eliminate agricultural export subsidies, the most important reform of international trade rules in agriculture since the WTO was established.
Agriculture has become the lynchpin of the agenda for both developing and developed countries. Three other issues have been important. The first, now resolved, pertained to compulsory licensing of medicines and patent protection. A second deals with a review of provisions giving special and differential treatment to developing countries; a third addresses problems that developing countries are having in implementing current trade obligations.
Agriculture has become the most important and controversial issue. Agriculture is particularly important for developing countries, because around 75% of the population in developing countries live in rural areas, and the vast majority are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. The first proposal in Qatar, in 2001, called for the end agreement to commit to "substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support.”
The European Union (EU) and the developing countries, led by Brazil and India, to make a more generous offer for reducing trade-distorting domestic support for agriculture, are asking the United States. The United States is insisting that the EU and the developing countries agree to make reductions that are more substantial in tariffs and to limit the number of import-sensitive and special products that would be exempt from cuts. Import-sensitive products are of most concern to developed countries like the European Union, while developing countries are concerned with special products – those exempt from both tariff cuts and subsidy reductions because of development, food security, or livelihood considerations. Brazil has emphasized reductions in trade-distorting domestic subsidies, especially by the United States (some of which it successfully challenged in the WTO U.S.-Brazil cotton dispute), while India has insisted on a large number of special products that would not be exposed to wider market opening.
3. Critical approaches: central role of food prices in WTO negotiations
a) Shifting center of gravity in global governance
The commonplace tendency is to blame the difficulties of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations on the World Trade Organization (WTO) itself. In contrast, some experts suggest that exogenous structural factors, especially changing commodity prices and trade flows, fatally undermined the round. They discount the significance of endogenous institutional factors such as the number of participants, the size of the agenda, or the Single Undertaking, although design failures, notably in the “modalities” for negotiation, did hurt. But what hurt even more was the way the WTO, in common with most multilateral organizations, has not caught up with the shifting center of gravity in global governance. The trading system is no longer a transatlantic bargain. The regulatory issues on the 21st century trade policy agenda will inevitably be negotiated in Geneva, but only after a new trans-Pacific accommodation recognizes China’s central role (1).
b) Food security and contested agricultural trade norms
The process of translating norms into policy is not always linear, as the case of the agricultural trade regime makes clear. Multiple norms coexist within the regime, and power and interests influence how those norms are interpreted and operationalized. It is not at all clear what the outcome for agriculture will be, if the Doha talks are ever completed. The negotiations are muddied by distinct and competing norms that have pitted liberalization against special and differential treatment for developing countries, and the idea that food and agriculture are unique and require alternative arrangements in the trade regime. The industrialized countries claimed that these various norms were compatible for themselves in the negotiation of the Uruguay Round AoA. But they have seen these norms as being in competition with one another when developing countries have tried to claim expanded policy space for agriculture and food security in the Doha Round. The controversy at Bali was a clear illustration of this double standard. The shifting power dynamics at the WTO, however, has kept the norm special and differential treatment (SDT) for food security and agriculture in play. The fact that the issue gained such a high profile, and was able to bring the rest of the WTO negotiations to a standstill, indicates that these alternative ideas have gained some ground within the trade regime. Thus far, however, developing countries have been more successful at ensuring that the items remain on the agenda, rather than ensuring the wider embrace of alternative norms and their adoption into the legal framework of the agreement (2).
c) Geopolitics of food security
The geopolitics of the Global Food Crisis and international trade has received limited scholarly attention, a significant omission given the major roles of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in structuring world food production and trade flows and as a principal inter-state governing mechanism of the global agro-food system. Prominent experts have analyzed recent international policy actions framing the WTO as a ‘fix’ to the Global Food Crisis, and pointed to the value of a critical geopolitics of agro-power sensitive to the spatial reconfiguration of production and power in the global agro-food system, problematizing geospatial categories such as ‘North’ and ‘South’, and that takes seriously contests for control of geopolitical agents such as the WTO (3).
1. Wolfe, R. First Diagnose, Then Treat: What Ails the Doha Round? (2015). World Trade Review, Volume 14 Issue 1, pages 7-28.
2. Clapp, J. Food Security and Contested Agricultural Trade Norms (2015). Journal of International Law and International Relations, Volume 11 No. 2, pages 104-115.
3. Margulis, M.E. Trading Out of the Global Food Crisis (2014). The World Trade Organization and the Geopolitics of Food Security.
Geopolitics, Volume 19(2), pages 322-350.
1. Doha Development Round: general
The Doha Round is the latest round of trade negotiations among the WTO membership. Its aim is to achieve major reform of the international trading system through the introduction of lower trade barriers and revised trade rules. The work programme covers about 20 areas of trade. The Round is also known semi-officially as the Doha Development Agenda as a fundamental objective is to improve the trading prospects of developing countries.
The Round was officially launched at the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The Doha Ministerial Declaration provided the mandate for the negotiations, including on agriculture, services and an intellectual property topic, which began earlier.
In Doha, ministers also approved a decision on how to address the problems developing countries face in implementing the current WTO agreements.
The Doha Round began with a ministerial-level meeting in Doha, Qatar in 2001. Subsequent ministerial meetings took place in Cancún, Mexico (2003), and Hong Kong (2005). Related negotiations took place in Paris, France (2005), Potsdam, Germany (2007), and Geneva, Switzerland (2004, 2006, 2008).
Progress in negotiations stalled after the breakdown of the July 2008 negotiations over disagreements concerning agriculture, industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers, services, and trade remedies. The most significant differences are between developed nations led by the European Union (EU), the United States (US), and Japan and the major developing countries led and represented mainly by India, Brazil, China, and South Africa. There is also considerable contention against and between the EU and the US over their maintenance of agricultural subsidies - seen to operate effectively as trade barriers.
Since the breakdown of negotiations in 2008, there have been repeated attempts to revive the talks, so far without success. Intense negotiations, mostly between the US, China, and India, were held at the end of 2008 seeking agreement on negotiation modalities, an impasse which was not resolved. In April 2011, then director-general Pascal Lamy "asked members to think hard about 'the consequences of throwing away ten years of solid multilateral work'.” A report to the WTO General Council by Lamy in May 2012 advocated "small steps, gradually moving forward the parts of the Doha Round which were mature, and re-thinking those where greater differences remained." Adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration on 7 December 2013 for the first time successfully addressed bureaucratic barriers to commerce - a small part of the Doha Round agenda. More recently, however, at the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Conference, WTO members agreed on a historic decision to eliminate agricultural export subsidies, the most important reform of international trade rules in agriculture since the WTO was established.
2. Doha Development Round: agriculture
Agriculture has become the lynchpin of the agenda for both developing and developed countries. Three other issues have been important. The first, now resolved, pertained to compulsory licensing of medicines and patent protection. A second deals with a review of provisions giving special and differential treatment to developing countries; a third addresses problems that developing countries are having in implementing current trade obligations.
Agriculture has become the most important and controversial issue. Agriculture is particularly important for developing countries, because around 75% of the population in developing countries live in rural areas, and the vast majority are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. The first proposal in Qatar, in 2001, called for the end agreement to commit to "substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support.”
The European Union (EU) and the developing countries, led by Brazil and India, to make a more generous offer for reducing trade-distorting domestic support for agriculture, are asking the United States. The United States is insisting that the EU and the developing countries agree to make reductions that are more substantial in tariffs and to limit the number of import-sensitive and special products that would be exempt from cuts. Import-sensitive products are of most concern to developed countries like the European Union, while developing countries are concerned with special products – those exempt from both tariff cuts and subsidy reductions because of development, food security, or livelihood considerations. Brazil has emphasized reductions in trade-distorting domestic subsidies, especially by the United States (some of which it successfully challenged in the WTO U.S.-Brazil cotton dispute), while India has insisted on a large number of special products that would not be exposed to wider market opening.
3. Critical approaches: central role of food prices in WTO negotiations
Source: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
a) Shifting center of gravity in global governance
The commonplace tendency is to blame the difficulties of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations on the World Trade Organization (WTO) itself. In contrast, some experts suggest that exogenous structural factors, especially changing commodity prices and trade flows, fatally undermined the round. They discount the significance of endogenous institutional factors such as the number of participants, the size of the agenda, or the Single Undertaking, although design failures, notably in the “modalities” for negotiation, did hurt. But what hurt even more was the way the WTO, in common with most multilateral organizations, has not caught up with the shifting center of gravity in global governance. The trading system is no longer a transatlantic bargain. The regulatory issues on the 21st century trade policy agenda will inevitably be negotiated in Geneva, but only after a new trans-Pacific accommodation recognizes China’s central role (1).
b) Food security and contested agricultural trade norms
The process of translating norms into policy is not always linear, as the case of the agricultural trade regime makes clear. Multiple norms coexist within the regime, and power and interests influence how those norms are interpreted and operationalized. It is not at all clear what the outcome for agriculture will be, if the Doha talks are ever completed. The negotiations are muddied by distinct and competing norms that have pitted liberalization against special and differential treatment for developing countries, and the idea that food and agriculture are unique and require alternative arrangements in the trade regime. The industrialized countries claimed that these various norms were compatible for themselves in the negotiation of the Uruguay Round AoA. But they have seen these norms as being in competition with one another when developing countries have tried to claim expanded policy space for agriculture and food security in the Doha Round. The controversy at Bali was a clear illustration of this double standard. The shifting power dynamics at the WTO, however, has kept the norm special and differential treatment (SDT) for food security and agriculture in play. The fact that the issue gained such a high profile, and was able to bring the rest of the WTO negotiations to a standstill, indicates that these alternative ideas have gained some ground within the trade regime. Thus far, however, developing countries have been more successful at ensuring that the items remain on the agenda, rather than ensuring the wider embrace of alternative norms and their adoption into the legal framework of the agreement (2).
c) Geopolitics of food security
The geopolitics of the Global Food Crisis and international trade has received limited scholarly attention, a significant omission given the major roles of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in structuring world food production and trade flows and as a principal inter-state governing mechanism of the global agro-food system. Prominent experts have analyzed recent international policy actions framing the WTO as a ‘fix’ to the Global Food Crisis, and pointed to the value of a critical geopolitics of agro-power sensitive to the spatial reconfiguration of production and power in the global agro-food system, problematizing geospatial categories such as ‘North’ and ‘South’, and that takes seriously contests for control of geopolitical agents such as the WTO (3).
4. International trade and SDGs
Source: http://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/2-Trade%20and%20SDGs.pdf
Video (Developing countries and the Doha Round): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ4jXRNIv9A
References:
1. Wolfe, R. First Diagnose, Then Treat: What Ails the Doha Round? (2015). World Trade Review, Volume 14 Issue 1, pages 7-28.
2. Clapp, J. Food Security and Contested Agricultural Trade Norms (2015). Journal of International Law and International Relations, Volume 11 No. 2, pages 104-115.
3. Margulis, M.E. Trading Out of the Global Food Crisis (2014). The World Trade Organization and the Geopolitics of Food Security.
Geopolitics, Volume 19(2), pages 322-350.